 | This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. (April 2013) |
The thermal history of Earth involves the study of the cooling history of Earth's interior. It is a sub-field of geophysics. (Thermal histories are also computed[by whom?] for the internal cooling of other planetary and stellar bodies.) The study of the thermal evolution of Earth's interior is uncertain and controversial in all aspects, from the interpretation of petrologic observations used to infer the temperature of the interior, to the fluid dynamics responsible for heat loss, to material properties that determine the efficiency of heat transport.